The use of vertically elongated poultry carriers having hooks from which loads are suspended during travel along a conveyor path through a weight sorting station, are well known. This invention relates to an improvement to such poultry handling equipment.
The suspension of poultry from carrier hooks during travel through a weight sorting station and release of the load from such hooks by means of a signal-operated release mechanism is disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 3,291,303. In such poultry handling equipment, the loaded hook is held in a travel position on the carrier by some latch device that is released by the signal-operated mechanism to enable gravitational displacement of the hook by the load to a load releasing position.
Other types of poultry releasing methods are also known, wherein the load is positively pushed off the hook by the load releasing mechanism. Also, positive camming of the hook to a release position is known as disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 3,708,829. A combination of hook camming and stop bar pushing of the load off the hook for load transfer purposes is furthermore disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,178,659.
The load releasing function associated with the prior art poultry handling equipment requires certain structural features and configurations producing problems relating to production reliability or "hang-up", create cleaning difficulties and increase equipment manufacturing costs. It is therefore an important object of the present invention to provide a novel load releasing poultry carrier arrangement that is simple in construction, reliable in operation and easy to clean.